Expressions

Stories for TOI Write India Campaign

A big thanks to Times of India’s (TOI) initiative to make India write. The Write India contest came as a big opportunity for writers like me. Creating a story every month is great experience. I will be posting my stories here, one after the other as the results are announced for each month. Find my stories under the category “Short stories for TOI Write India Campaign”

For those who are not familiar with the ways of the contest, it runs for 11 months. Each month the contest is hosted by a different Indian Author. July was Amish Tripathi, August – Chetan Bhagat , September was Ashwin Sanghi …. Hope you get it!

These authors give a passage at the beginning of every month (The 7th of every month) and attach some rules to it. The contest opens on the 7th and closes on the 30th every month.

The writers should write a story with the passage appearing anywhere in their story within 1500-2500 words!

Every month a winner will be chosen and at the end of 11 months their stories will be published as a book. They all win a Kindle and a ticket to a week-long writers workshop in Diu.

Who likes to wait? None of us like to stare at the watch hoping it ticks way 60 times ! We may wander about in lazy thoughts on bed for hours together, but waiting at the traffic signal, seeing the countdown makes us fidgety. We want to zoom past!

It feels like the clock and our eyes have a deal. The more we look at it, the slower it ticks for us. Time and tide waits for none, but how does it manage to slow down so much. When I was in primary school I used to wonder why games hours are shorter than Math hours. I never knew that time neither had an accelerator, nor a brake.

I am waiting today, for the Times of India Write India contest result, remembering how my parents and I waited in from of my PC from 8 a.m. for my higher secondary school results that were to come only by 9 a.m. The human mind is very much capable of comprehending that the result is not going to come any sooner just because we stare at the computer screen for an hour. It also knows that it is going to be the same result, whatever may it be. In my current scenario, my mind even knows it is a very far-fetched chance that I would make it to the top ten winners in a contest where thousands contest!

But I haven’t been able to do anything else since afternoon! I am typing this whole thing to kill that last 15 minutes before it gets the better of me! It is 08.58 p.m. I have two minutes to go before the result will be announced. So I am signing off! Sorry for an abrupt ending! Wish me luck!